asked what her good father was bawling in this outrageous
way for. "I strictly beg you will let such unnecessary running away
alone," Herr Elias began to storm at her. "My son-in-law is a
melancholy fellow and as jealous as a Turk. You'd better stay quietly
at home, or else there'll be some mischief done. My partner is in there
screaming and crying about his betrothed, because she will gad about
so." Christina looked at the book-keeper astounded; but he gave a
significant glance in the direction of the cupboard in the office where
Herr Roos was in the habit of keeping his cinnamon water. "You'd better
go in and console your betrothed," he said as he strode away. Christina
went up to her own room, only to make a slight change in her dress, and
give out the clean linen, and discuss with the cook what would have to
be done about the Sunday roast-joint, and at the same time pick up a
few items of town-gossip, then she would go at once and see what really
was the matter with her betrothed.

You know, kindly, reader, that we all of us, when in Traugott's case,
have to go through our appointed stages; we can't help ourselves.
Despair is succeeded by a dull dazed sort of moody reverie, in which
the crisis is wont to occur; and this then passes over into a milder
pain, in which Nature is able to apply her remedies with effect.

It was in this stage of sad but beneficial pain that, some days later,
Traugott again sat on the Carlsberg, gazing out as before upon the
sea-waves and the grey misty clouds which had gathered over Hela; but
he was not seeking as before to discover the destiny reserved for him
in days to come; no, for all that he had hoped for, all that he had
dimly dreamt of, had vanished. "Oh!" said he, "my call to art was a
bitter, bitter deception. Felicia was the phantom who deluded me into
the belief in that which never had any other existence but in the
insane fancy of a fever-stricken mind. It's all over. I will give it
all up, and go back--into my dungeon. I have made up my mind; I will go
back." Traugott again went back to his work in the office, whilst the
wedding-day with Christina was once more fixed. On the day before the
wedding was to come off, Traugott was standing in Arthur's Hall,
looking, not without a good deal of heart-rending sadness, at the
fateful figures of the old burgomaster and his page, when his eye fell
upon the broker to whom Berklinger was trying to sell his stock.
Without pausing to thi